Designing attractions to capture the attention of those online visitors is becoming big business as major corporations move to establish marketing footholds in 3-D virtual worlds such as Second Life, which was founded in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab.

The downsized family vehicle Ford Edge, and the next generation of vehicles like it, are the big hope of an auto industry that finds itself in a familiar situation. Car buyers, fearful of more gas price increases, are thinking small again, and automakers want to make the small vehicles so sexy that that they'll sell for the same as or more than today's bigger sedans and SUVs. | PHOTO GALLERY

Toyota is one of many automakers that has jumped headlong into the gold rush to win the sales and especially the loyalty of the next generation of car buyers. The automaker started its Scion division from scratch to aim straight at the teens and twentysomethings of Generation Y, roughly those born after 1977.

Nearly anonymous car company Suzuki is hoping to build its fortunes in America selling small cars manufactured by the remnants of Daewoo, a South Korean automaker that failed under its own name in the USA.

Americans shunned cars by South Korean maker Daewoo, so it had to quit the U.S. market. But now General Motors has invested in Daewoo, and to help repay that, it has modified a small Daewoo to sell in the USA as the Chevrolet Aveo.